When tomatoes are harvested and sorted, they normally are packaged in standard 25 pound bulk pack boxes. Each such box normally holds between 72 and 84 tomatoes, without using dividers. Growers ship the produce to a tomato repacker who checks the tomatoes for quality, sorting them by size and color. The tomatoes are repacked into standard 25 pound bulk boxes and shipped to grocery stores, restaurants and other retailers and users.
Packing tomatoes in the 25 pound bulk box, which ordinarily has a dimension on the order of 8 inches depth by 12 inches width by 18.5 inches length, permits damage to individual tomatoes during ripening, packing, or transit relatively easily. The 25 pound bulk box allows pressure to develop on individual tomatoes and encourages spoilage and concussion bruising. Also, cross-contamination can occur, where, for example, one rotten tomato can ruin its neighboring tomatoes, particularly the ones below. When the bulk shipment is received at the destination, such as a restaurant, the tomatoes can be sorted, and waste or spoiled tomatoes can be discarded. If they are not promptly sorted at the delivery destination or restaurant, further tomato spoilage occurs.
It is therefore desirable to package tomatoes in a fashion that they are less likely to be damaged in transit and so that spoilage of one tomato, either during transit or thereafter, is less apt to spoil numerous tomatoes in the box.
It has been discovered that growers or repackers can package the tomatoes in a single layer thereby reducing the likelihood of spoilage. The advantages of packaging the tomatoes in a single layer are disclosed in a related application filed simultaneously herewith by P. Petriekis, M. Janis, P. Robinson and E. Ott entitled "Food Carton and Method", Ser. No. 07/357,379, the disclosure of which is incorporated by this reference. However, packaging the tomatoes manually in a single layer greatly increases the cost of the tomatoes.
A need therefore exists to provide an apparatus and method for packaging tomatoes which is not labor intensive, which packs the tomatoes into a single layer carton, and which packages the tomatoes more efficiently within each carton. Also, an object of the invention is to provide the ability to pack tomatoes by count or by weight.